New London Has Highest Concentration Of DUI Accidents

Database shows what causes most accidents, where and when they happen

Drunken driving accident rates in Connecticut towns:

NEW LONDON — The maze of one-way streets in the Bank Street entertainment district can be tricky to navigate, even for a sober native in the middle of the day.

It can be more difficult for a visitor who just stumbled out of a bar at 2 a.m. and plans on driving home.

The regional draw of the night life, the old-world street layout and other factors combined to give New London a higher concentration of drunken-driving accidents per mile of road than any other town in Connecticut, according to a Hartford Courant analysis of data collected by the University of Connecticut.

Drunken driving was the primary cause of 137 vehicle crashes in New London from 2009 through 2012. It was also the biggest cause of fatal accidents state-wide.

That’s far fewer than Hartford, which saw 247 DUI crashes during the same period, or New Haven, where there were 223.

But New London has only 83.7 miles of road, for a rate of more than eight DUI crashes on every five miles of pavement in the city over those four years. The next highest rate was in Hartford, where there was about one crash per mile.

And even though 1.92 miles of busy Interstate 95 cut through New London, only six of the 137 DUI crashes during those years were on the highway.

Deputy Police Chief Peter Reichard attributed the high rate of DUI crashes to two main factors: the popular Bank Street district that draws people from across the region, and the maze of narrow and one-way streets in the city center.

The city also has “the most liquor permits per square mile of any town in the state,” Reichard said.

The Bank Street area is full of bars and liquor stores that are within walking distance of each other, “so at bar time, everyone’s falling out into the street, and they don’t always walk home,” he said.

The police put a priority on Bank Street patrols when the bars close with a “small contingent of officers. If we know we’re coming into big weekends, we’ll put additional people in downtown. Then shortly after the crowds are cleared, we’re doing roving patrols.”

The city hasn’t done a DUI checkpoint in more than a year because of budget constraints, but “usually a day doesn’t go by without one DUI arrest,” Reichard said.

Other towns with the highest rates of DUI crashes per mile were Norwich, New Britain, Derby, New Haven, Plainville, Farmington, Bristol and East Hartford.

The average of all towns in Connecticut was about 0.35 DUI crashes per mile.

For years, police in Plainville — which is surrounded by the much larger towns of Bristol, Farmington, Southington and Bristol — actively sought out grants to run drunken-driving checkpoints.

The DUI checkpoints, he said, caught many drunken drivers and deterred others. And even though the department hasn’t applied for those grants in a few years because of budget issues, Plainville police still run checkpoints and adjust their staffing to be “on the lookout for drunken drivers,” Catania said. “We’re still very aggressive with it.”

“It’s about having a leadership philosophy in the department to realize that [drunken driving] is a serious offense and puts everyone at risk,” Catania said. “Deterrence is really the key to this.”

Of the 67 DUI crashes in Plainville from 2009-12, 38 of them were on heavily traveled state roads including routes 72, 372, 10 and 177. By contrast, 24 were on local roads, and five happened on the 2.35 miles of Interstate 84 that runs through a corner of town. Overall, there were 0.79 DUI crashes per mile in Plainville during those four years.

While only a small percentage of crashes are fatal, DUI crashes are the deadliest, according to the data, collected by the Connecticut Crash Data Repository at the University of Connecticut. The CTCDR database comprises information about crashes collected from the state Department of Public Safety and the state Department of Transportation.

Explore the database by accident cause:

Police investigating a crash identify a single “contributing factor” that led to the accident. Even if more than one factor might have led to a crash — for example, if someone were speeding and following too closely before they rear-ended another car — police must choose one contributing factor that they believe was the primary cause.

If police decide that driving under the influence was the primary cause of an accident, that does not mean there was a drunken-driving conviction in court. The database does not include information about arrests or citations.

Statewide, there were 329 fatal crashes from 2009-12 where the contributing factor was driving under the influence, more than any other cause, the data show. Accidents where the driver lost control accounted for 213 fatal crashes.

A plan to include cell phone usage as a contributing factor is in the works and should begin in 2015, said Kevin Nursick of the state DOT.

The data also show that:

• The most dangerous places to drive in Connecticut are the I-91 and I-95 corridors. More accidents happen per mile in those towns than anywhere else, on the whole.

• The most dangerous stretch of interstate is I-95 between New Haven and New York. Along the 3.34 miles of interstate in Stamford alone, there were 2,133 crashes from 2009-2012. That’s more than 638 crashes per mile, or three crashes every two days.

Interstate 95 from New Haven to New York is the most dangerous stretch of interstate in Connecticut:

• Hartford had more accidents per mile than any other town in the state: nearly 95 crashes per mile on all roads over those four years. That includes the busy intersection of Interstates 91 and 84, some of the heaviest-travelled roads in Connecticut.

• The biggest cause of accidents was following too closely. Failing to grant the right of way, driver losing control, speed too fast for conditions and improper lane change round out the top five “contributing factors.”

• Of those “following too closely” accidents, more happened between 5 and 6 p.m. than during any other hour of the day, and more happened on Fridays than any other day. More drivers involved in those accidents are in their 20s, but drivers in their 40s also account for a substantial portion.

The I-91 and I-95 corridors have had most rush-hour crashes per mile from 2009-2012:

• There were more fatal crashes during the months of June and July than any other 2-month period.

• More men than women were involved in accidents. National studies have also shown that men drive more miles than women do.

• More crashes involved drivers in their early 20s than any other age group, no matter the cause of the accident.

Hartford had the most crashes per mile on any kind of road. Towns along the I-91 and I-95 corridors also had many accidents:

SOURCE: Connecticut Crash Data Repository, Department of Transportation.* The crash data come from the University of Connecticut's Crash Data Repository, which collects information from the state Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Safety.

The CTCDR notes: For crashes occurring before 2007 and between March 2011 to December 2011, property damage only crashes occurring on local roads were not recorded in the DOT database. Therefore, PDO crash totals will vary greatly over these time periods for no reason other than the data were not recorded for these crashes.Also, Windsor Locks did not submit crash data to ConnDOT for 2011. Therefore, there are no Windsor Locks crashes data on file for that year.